7/26/09

In choosing Victor Hugo for his first major theatre direction project, Christophe Honoré amazes, intrigues.Angelo, the Tyrant of Padua is even more surprising: rarely staged, this play is almost incongruous. For him, it is a text whose clarity obviously hides secret doors and obscure and ambiguous underground passages. In it he looked for, and found, two female roles for Clotilde Hesme (Tisbe) and Emmanuelle Devos (Catarina).The first is Angelo’s mistress, the second his wife, but both of them secretly love the same man, Rodolfo. Powerless to make himself loved, jealous, suspicious, authoritarian and violent, the tyrant does not succeed in changing the course of his inclinations.

Victor Hugo thus wrote a drama of hearts in which the harshest power plays with the purest feelings. This domestic tyranny, which turns into a romantic melodrama, allows Christophe Honoré and his actors to explore the territory of the intimate. For the issue of tyranny is not so much power as desire. It is its forms, as they manifest themselves and break out that the show tries to capture, if only for a moment. On the stage, here is then the amorous language, the bodies of desires, the eternal vows, a proof or two of love, but above all the strategies, hopes and nightmares that they engender. Why, in this cold universe, must desire infiltrate despite everything and turn things upside-down, throw everything to the ground, revolt? This question is at the core of Christophe Honoré’s work. Here, he tackles the text with the freedom of the cinema, a formal freedom that permits him to “reframe” the bodies, to go closer, to have the seething of hearts be seen and felt on the women’s skin. But he nonetheless resorts to the theatre, to actors and actresses, unfolding a lyricism that comes from the acting, that is not afraid to be visible, to impose bursts and flights of feeling as well as despondencies and agonies.

Christophe Honoré measure himself against a vision, that of Victor Hugo, against a theatre of manifesto and epic ambition. “The equivalent of the cinemascope on stage?” Christophe Honoré asks himself. A romantic drama in prose, Angelo, the Tyrant of Padua is a little-known play from the repertory of Victor Hugo (1802-1885). He was 30 years old but had already acquired maturity when he wrote this story of tyranny and feelings for the stage of the Théâtre-Français. A tragedy infused with power and fragility in which the destiny of four passionate beings is played out in the space of three days.

The play is fully costumed by Yohji Yamamoto, Limi Feu and Coming Soon in the idea of Christophe Honoré to have timeless outfits for this timeless story.

7/16/09

Paris quartier d'été 2009 is supported by COMING SOON from July 15 to August 9, 2009

For the last twenty years, this festival makes the best of the summer pause to offer a contrasting opinion on Paris by running a pluri-artistic saga in the four corners of the capital. Departure is in the centre, at Palais Royal, the main street of the festival, where Paris quartier d'été once again sets its trestles behind the Comédie Française, amidst the Buren Columns. That's the crux of it. As for the shows, the choreographers Robyn Orlin, Maguy Marin and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui will ensure that your nights are ecstatic.

Further south, in the 12th, you will hear the bells ring by Pierre Henry, composer of Messe pour le temps présent. The godfather of brand music invites you to his apartment every evening to listen to his reading of God by Victor Hugo.

Paris quartier d'été makes the parks and gardens of the capital ring out with rotating concert. One night on Belleville heights, the other in the heart of the Latin quarter or in the Montmartre areas, for a Blue Note...For miracles, head in the direction of Les Halles, where Dean & Britta revive Factory by Andy Warhol in the Saint-Eustache church singing , telling us the stories of 13 Factory muses with their own images filmed by Andy Warhol as brackground.

For the early birds, Bartabas will present his Lever du Soleil , a 2006 creation, a pure moment of magic and nature around 5:30 in the morning, a nice way to wake-up!

7/9/09

Barnabé Fillion was supposed to play the role of “model” when I interviewed him but I quickly learned that modeling and fashion are not the focal points of his life. This made our interview much more exciting - and poetic - than expected.

Barnabé is someone who has many surprising talents when he is “off-duty”.

Before the COMING SOON shoot, he was playing a small machine, which turned out to be a synthesizer; he is working on producing an album influenced by artists such as, Eno, Pole, Maurizio, Holger Czukai, and Jah Shaka (“I am such a big fan,” he says, laughing).

But his main occupation turns out to be much more unexpected. When not modeling for Yohji Yamamoto, Maison Martin Margiela, or Hedi Slimane, Barnabé is a “nose”, a perfume designer. After his photography studies, he decided to deviate to phytology, which led him to compose his own remedies and drinks, ultimately moving on to perfume formulas.

Talk to him about fragrances and his face immediately lights up: “I came in to the perfume world reading Le Miasme et la jonquille by Corbin. It is such a pleasure to work in this field. I am always working and testing; I begin with hard notes trying to match my ideas and thoughts then I confront them. I am currently launching my own laboratory in Morocco, in Tangier”. Barnabé’s conception has something very special: he is obsessed with organic materials. During his creation process he only uses organic substances (“[they are] more fragile and vibrating, and particularly more honest”), and then he studies the “awful synthetic game” while strictly repudiating it. His approach to fragrance seems to stand at the crossroads of romantic and concept: with his brand Diurne, he re-works classic fragrances of the antique perfumery to “keep only the inspiration, which makes the stamp of acquaintance disappear”, while his line Saja is dedicated to the poesy of travel, inviting you to visit “olfactoryly” various places around the world.

Why were we interviewing Barnabé? Oh, yes, because he is the model of the last COMING SOON lookbook. The day of shooting with Barnabé was delightful: he has something very peaceful, that may come from his passion for kundalini yoga. He is also very funny, capable of playing air guitar on the shoehorn! He liked modeling for the A/W 2009-10 Yohji Yamamoto show and was astonished to see how this collection looked like him, because “[he] also wears pajamas under [his] suits”. And this COMING SOON collection? “I like the military print which almost turns into a Hawaiian shirt print! I also love the hats and the wide leg pants.”

Where can one meet Barnabé? This is easy, his Parisian address book perfectly fits him: the delicious organic restaurant Rose Bakery, the best pancakes in Paris at Breizh Café, the nice tea addicts of Jugetsudo, the perfect taste of Caravane, and of course he strolls at Dyptique where he likes the oldest fragrances and the home perfumes. And how can one recognize him? This is easy too: he looks like a poet from another era, a poet who makes perfume…

7/2/09

The German dancer and choreographer, Pina Bausch, passed away on June 30th, at the age of 68, announced the Wuppertal Tanztheater. She began her career as a dancer in New York. Four years later, she returned to her native country. She had been the head the of Wuppertal Opera dance company since 1973, during this time she choreographed more than forty pieces, including Café Müller (1978), Nelken (1982), Danzon (1995) and Nefes (2003), all widely and positively received.

She also worked closely with the cinematic world: she played a blind princess in Fellini’s E la nave va (1982), and Almodovar’s Hable con Ella (2002) featured long segments of her creations; in 1989, she explored a new role as director of her own film, La Plainte de l’impératrice.

She collaborated with Yohji Yamamoto in 1998, for the 25th anniversary of the Pina Bausch dance company in Wuppertal; to accompany her choreography, all the dancers wore Yohji Yamamoto clothing. For this performance, Yohji Yamamoto joined the dancers on stage performing karate. Yohji considered Pina as an inspiration, a muse: to him, she represented the perfect silhouette and movement reduced to the very essence of body and clothes. A whole Yohji Yamamoto collection was dedicated to her in 1990. They shared a very strong opinion and desire for “what cannot be seen”.

Wim Wenders, who worked closely with Yohji Yamamoto on the film “Notebook on Cities and Clothes”, was currently working on a dance film project with her. All of them, also including Bartabas, composed a kind of an artistic family, which has definitely lost one of its closest members.

Philosophy

COMING SOON is a brand created for a generation of women and men who wear what they like without stating who designed it. Wearing Coming Soon is an act to express who you are through the essence of clothing, fabric, and cut for everyday comfort and style.